Title: Software inspections: comparing a formal method based with a classical reading methodology

Authors: Luciana Brasil Rebelo Dos Santos; Valdivino Alexandre De Santiago Júnior; Lucas Venezian Povoa; Albino Vieira Freitas; Cleyton De Castro Mario

Addresses: Área de Informática, Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo, Caraguatatuba, SP, Brazil ' Laboratório Associado de Computação e Matemática Aplicada, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil ' Área de Informática, Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo, Caraguatatuba, SP, Brazil ' Área de Informática, Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo, Caraguatatuba, SP, Brazil ' Área de Informática, Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo, Caraguatatuba, SP, Brazil

Abstract: In this paper, we present a rigorous comparison of two inspection techniques: our formal method-based approach, SOLIMVA 3.0, with a set of Object-Oriented Reading Techniques (OORTs). We evaluated efficiency (required time to analyse a scenario) and effectiveness (ability to find defects within UML diagrams). Results show that the classical OORT methodology is more efficient than SOLIMVA. However, we found a strong positive correlation between the required time by using OORT and SOLIMVA. For effectiveness, in general, both methodologies presented the same performance. However, SOLIMVA detected more inconsistency (incorrectness and extra information), ambiguity, and partial incompleteness defects while OORT identified more total incompleteness. Our overall conclusion is that a classical reading methodology (OORT) and a formal-based one (SOLIMVA) can be adopted in a complementary way within a software inspection process. While OORT is less costly to apply, SOLIMVA can be used to address some specific types of defects.

Keywords: software inspection; SOLIMVA 3.0; formal methods; object-oriented reading techniques; quasi-experiment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2019.099198

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2019 Vol.59 No.4, pp.296 - 317

Received: 20 Dec 2017
Accepted: 09 Apr 2018
Published online: 23 Apr 2019 *

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